DIY biotech spreads to community

Kevin Lustig spins a prize wheel in the vacant City of Carlsbad owned building on Faraday Avenue that will soon be inhabited by a community biotech center. He and Joseph Jackson, at right, will help lead the project. The wheel was left over from a previous event held at the building.
— CHARLIE NEUMAN/U-T San Diego/ZUMA Press

Kevin Lustig spins a prize wheel in the vacant City of Carlsbad owned building on Faraday Avenue that will soon be inhabited by a community biotech center. He and Joseph Jackson, at right, will help lead the project. The wheel was left over from a previous event held at the building.
/ CHARLIE NEUMAN/U-T San Diego/ZUMA Press

Dodson, Lustig and other DIYbio San Diego leaders were interviewed at the group’s prospective new home at 2351 Faraday Ave. The 6,000-square-foot building, formerly occupied by an insurance company, was empty aside from some plastic chairs and a few tables. A practice putter and a numbers wheel remained from the previous inhabitants.

To turn the building into a functioning biotech space, basic infrastructure such as sinks must be installed, along with lab equipment. And money will have to be raised for maintenance and operating expenses. Lustig said the group plans to ask local biotech companies for support.

There’s a larger purpose to DIY, or community, biotech groups than curiosity and job creation, said Joseph Jackson, another group leader. That purpose is to revitalize the individual inventor’s role in America.

“We had a long tradition of that with the Wright Brothers, as bicycle mechanics that prototyped an airplane,” Jackson said. “(Thomas) Edison became this industrial titan, and then we had Bell Labs and a long tradition of corporate R&D, but that’s died off. We’re trying to fill a need here, a new niche that can hopefully get back to our roots of innovation in this country.”

The various biotech groups can also provide security expertise, said Jeff Cassett, weapons of mass destruction coordinator for the San Diego Division of the FBI. Cassett joined the group last February, according to its website.

Cassett said he joined to provide a point of contact so that if group members see anything amiss, they’ll know who to call.

“Early on, from our perspective, it was something we didn’t understand very well,” Cassett said. “So interaction with these folks have helped us understand what that movement is all about, how we can be helpful to that movement, and how they can be helpful to us.”

DIY biotech has been around for decades. In a 1992 column in the Los Angeles Times, innovation expert Michael Schrage predicted the rise of “bathtub biotechnology.”

The website diybio.org lists 16 groups in the United States, including Sunnyvale, known as BioCurious, San Francisco (BioBridge) and Los Angeles (LA BioHackers).

Most of these groups have no building of their own; they meet wherever they can find the space. What’s billed as the country’s first community biotech lab was founded in 2010 in Brooklyn under the name of Genspace.

Having a physical location exclusively dedicated to biotech allows Genspace’s members to focus on their work, said Oliver Medvedik, its co-founder and director of scientific programs.

“You have a space that’s not your bedroom, for example,” Medvedik said. “You have laboratory space with a sink and that’s proper to carry out experiments.”

Sharing equipment among members saves money because the equipment is used more efficiently, Medvedik said. “Nobody uses a centrifuge 24-7 by themselves,” he said.

Members commonly use the equipment to study DNA, perhaps their own, Medvedik said. They may perform safe experiments such as transplanting a fluorescence-producing gene into yeast. The purpose is mainly educational.

The lab also supports serious research. Medvedik said he’s working on biosensors that can detect arsenic and other contaminants in drinking water. The goal is to make a cheap device that can be used in developing nations for public health.

The laboratory is rated as Biosafety Level One, meaning that it deals in well-understood organisms that typically don’t cause disease. Lustig, of DIYbio San Diego, said the Carlsbad center will operate under the same conditions.